This is What I'm Talking About! Using the Annotation Reading Method to Read Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter

So I just got a frantic email from an old student.  She waited till a bit late to start reading Hawthorne because she knew that she had the long Thanksgiving weekend to catch up.  This is pretty unlike her.  I'd also point out that she doesn't generally get challenged by the concrete level of the text.  So, when she encountered Hawthorne's dense prose, she freaked out.  Here's a version of my reply.  This is exactly how students can use the annotation reading method to begin to read Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, just as they can use it to read any number of difficult texts.  My sample annotations of Hawthorne are included below.  

Hi ________,

Oh yeah!  I love that Mrs. ______ teaches that novel because it challenges the brightest of the bright.  Hawthorne's prose is so hard to get used to (but once you're halfway through or so, it will just seem natural).  

Think about how I taught you to read Poe way back in the day and the lessons from 9th grade about reading and annotating, if you remember.  Reading a few lines ofThe Odyssey and then writing what was happening, reading a little, writing, etc.  The basic idea is to read a very little bit and pay attention to what you DO understand, and then write that down (that's the annotation - the writing what you do know).  With Hawthorne, it's one thing to get the sense of what's going on and another to know every single word and phrase that he's using.  That's graduate school (or at least advanced undergraduate) level.  I know that's hard for you - to not understand everything as you go because you're quite bright - but it's how reading really works.  I read on something like a 734th grade level and sometimes I have to gloss over things.

But how do you do this?  I've attached 2 documents.  One is a sample of how I think you can proceed.  The crossed out words and phrases are things that I think you might not know right off.  Learn all these words and figure out the meanings of the odd phrases, but do it on the second, third, and fourth time you read the text.  For now, you're really looking to understand what's happening.  Again, I know that you want to understand everything, but in trying to do that right away, it's shutting you down and you're not getting much of anything.  So try this.

The 2nd document I've attached is the whole text in a split version, just like the sample I sent to you.  If it helps, read it this way.  To cross things out on a computer, highlight them and press "Ctrl" and "shift" and "X" all at once.  Or something like that - I've got a Mac. so it's a little different.  Or sneak into the school library and print the whole thing off.  It's less than 300 pages . . . don't tell anyone I suggested that.  :)

A throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and grey steeple-crowned hats, inter-mixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes. The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognised it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. In accordance with this rule it may safely be assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-house somewhere in the Vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson's lot, and round about his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old churchyard of King's Chapel. Certain it is that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front.

There’s sad, dreary men with beards and hats. They’re mixed together with women. They’re in front of a wooden place with a heavy wooden door . . . (edifice probably means building of some kind, because it has a door . . . in Spanish, what does edificio mean?) These people founded a new colony They originally were all about happiness in the beginning Recognized a necessity some of the soil to be a cemetery and some to be a prison It’s safe to assume that the first people of Boston built the first prison near Cornhill Does this mean in the same season that they marked out the first cemetery? Nucleus . . . center, right?  Like in a cell? The center of the place was an old churchyard – King’s Chapel It’s certain that 15 years later The jail was stained and old This gave it a dark and sad look

Annotating Tell-tale Heart with Struggling Readers

Here's a fun assignment.  We were reading "Tell-tale Heart" and I had a hard time getting students to write their annotations down - the standard unwillingness to put the words on the page.  So I ran a basic reading and annotating lesson - the startup with a question asking them to review an idea from an earlier piece of the text, followed by a group reading and annotation of the short paragraph you can see in this picture.  Then, I moved into the 15 minute reading and annotating portion, where students read for content and answer a question.  But, I threw in a twist.  The student with the most correct annotations and a good answer to the question got a 6 out of 5 for the day.  It was a competition.  This is what I got from the winner, a girl who hadn't annotated more than 4 sentences on her own previously.  

The nice thing about this particular exercise for struggling readers is that it shows them exactly how much meaning they can make from a text that is otherwise above their heads (they think).  It isn't as if quantity of writing is the only thing that matters; one the contrary, students' main struggle is often to write something that they feel is truly valid.  "I don't want to just say the same thing" is a comment second only to "I know what it means, but I just can't say it."  If nothing else, writing this much illustrates that she was able to say a lot about the text without (if you look closely) much deviation from the literal meaning on the page.  After all, reading what's right there is the first thing when acquiring overall literacy.

My Literacy Project and the Common Core Standards

This is an old piece I never got around to finishing.  I just dusted up what I had because I don't mind pointing out that the things the CCSS supposedly focus on are things that are at the heart of my teaching method.  But seriously, this whole edu-industry is bullshit at least as far as actually teaching kids is concerned.  Also, John King is a tool.  In my professional opinion.

            So the looming beast in all of this is the Common Core literacy standards.  Let me be clear, I think the language of the Common Core is another in a long wave of edu-speak quick fix movements.  As a teacher in NYC, I’ve seen a lot of these already.  It’s not a paradigm so much as a product – a diversion of funds and attention toward think tanks and privateering as a response to the a crisis that is hardly ever discussed in anything even remotely resembling useful ways.  It’s a gift to the world of what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capital” in The Shock Doctrine.  It’s a demand for more workshops and seminars to discuss not exactly how one might help students to become better educated, but something more along the lines of how we can understand what these standards want us to do in order to ostensibly educate students in the way we’re being asked to educate them.  It’s a demand, as Diane Ravitch points out, for schools to dump more money into edu-software and computer systems that don’t reduce class sizes or provide individualized learning experiences.  They provide data that can be further analyzed for additional fees.  So I’m not writing about the Common Core because I think it’s actually always good pedagogy.  I’m writing about it because it’s a material reality for educators in the same way that state exams and standardized tests are a material reality for our students.  Finding a way to appease (or fool) the beast while providing our kids with genuine educational opportunities – the original point of this blog anyway – is my focus.  

So with this caveat in mind, the video of Comissioner King and David Coleman chatting with another edu-speak talking head is really interesting and surprisingly - to be honest - a bit exciting.
 

I’m leaving aside my doubts about their claim that the solitary focus on the text “levels the playing field” as if socio-economic influences aren’t impacting the way students interact with texts.  Keep an eye out for my comments coming up on the Common Core as a New New Criticism.

With that said, there are some bullet points that directly relate to my project here and should be emphasized to shore up working room when administrators and school reviewers come around sniffing for proof of Common Core competency. 

1)  We need to correct the trend of giving students simpler materials and “translated” materials so that they can access texts.

That’s kind of the point here.  Students – not teachers – are translating difficult texts so that they can access the texts themselves.  If I want students to read Hegel, the judge’s sentences in the Scottsboro trials, or Dave Zirin’s polemic on race and freespeech for athletes, it’s because I want them to read these texts, not just receive their content. 

            2)  Students need to see access points to difficult texts, allowing them to move up in their ability to deal with more complex vocabulary, syntax, structure, and overall complexity. 

Again, that's kind of the point.  If we assume that students can find basic meaning in a text and then fill in details or just move on, then students can tackle pretty much anything.   

            3)  Students should read and re-read texts to enhance understanding, but also to look at craft and the way that authors lay out their arguments. 

Again, that’s kind of the point.  In my lesson on “Masque of theRed Death,” readers were able to make sense of the text by pushing forward and then revisiting things that didn’t make sense earlier.  When students realized that “sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores” were symptoms, they could go revisit pestilence and conclude that it’s a disease, but – even better – they could recognize all the foreshadowing that Poe laces through the early paragraphs.    

So let's just get the kids reading.  My annotation method works.

Reading Increasingly Difficult Texts

One of the students I've been tracking has moved from the prose summaries of The Odyssey to the Fitzgerald translation. Compare these annotations from the first pages of Book XXII to the same students' earlier annotations - the second student in my 2 Odyssey Sample Annotations.

The nuance is certainly improving and I don't think I see any of the character confusion found in the earlier example.

2 Odyssey Sample Annotations

Again, here are a pair of snapshots - this time from a class that is a tracked SPED section. Instead of the Fitzgerald trans of The Odyssey used in my other classes, this section has been working largely with a narrative summary. After reading these, we work with selections from Fitzgerald.

The two students couldn't be further apart in terms of approach to work, but both images illustrate the ways that annotation could be used as a reading comprehension strategy.

The first was concerned with her ability to read the text at all, despite the fact that the vocabulary wasn't terribly beyond her. After conferencing, we nailed down the nonstandard syntax as the main source of her problems. This image was the result of a period's work.

The second is from the same day, done by another of my target students. I especially like the second note from the top on the left, where you can see him parsing out a little bit of the meaning so that he has enough to read on with. Further down on the same side, you can see him still doing a bit of copying of the wording from the text itself - I can't be sure of his level of comprehension here - and near the bottom, he summarizes with the brief "The cyclops ate Zeus people." This character misreading is potentially disastrous, even though he's able to get the general events out of the story.

What about this passage suggested that the sailors belonged to Zeus? Just a misreading, based on speed or carelessness? The mention of praying to Zeus?

Reading The Odyssey

So this is just a quick snapshot, literally. We've been reading the Fitzgerald translation of The Odyssey, using my annotation method of focusing on what you understand in a text in order to provide an entry point for comprehension.

This is a few pages of annotations from a student who has consistently told me that she doesn't understand anything. However, by continually asking her to read a little, stop, and summarize what she does know, this student has been able to complete readings far above those that she felt comfortable with previously. I don't claim to know how this works, but I can suggest that lowering the amount of info a student has to hold in their short term memory seems to make acquisition of new content easier.

The passage was from Book XXIII, where Penelope is testing Odysseus by talking about his bed.

Learning to Read Rousseau

This is part 9 of my literacy project, focusing on teaching kids to construct meaning by annotating and working with what they do know about the text instead of being paralyzed by what they don't. The first entry in this series - “The Problem” - was posted in early September.

Most of my time on this project has been spent on my English classes, mainly because they're the place where I spend the bulk of my time and energy. It's where my job is to teach kids to read and write. My Philosophy classes absolutely tear my heart up every day though. They're great. I love them because it gives me a chance to interact on a more intellectual level than I might otherwise with students, at least in terms of the content. But, if I'm being honest, it's also because a lot of my favorite students from the last few years fill these classes. It's a place for me to be nurturing and brutal and biased and demanding as the individual student requires. So . . . it's not the most objective classroom space.

Still, I like to try to measure success and growth in these classes as much as possible. Following an initiative my administration is pushing, I've been focusing on a sub-group of young men of a pretty wide range of academic tendencies. At the school where I'm teaching, we don't exactly do a great job of pushing young men into high intellectual practices, a trend that's pretty recurrent throughout the Bronx. So I figured that I would try to track the growth of 4 young men in my philosophy classes.

This is my first full reflection on that, although the focus has been pretty real for me since the early classes this September. For several weeks, students worked with the reading and annotation method I've been advocating – writing everything they know and ignoring or moving past what they don't until later. At the end of the unit, students got a choice of texts to read on their own, annotate, and explicate. This student chose to read and annotate a selection from Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. It's a fairly challenging text once you go below the surface level of the dichotomy between natural and social sources of inequality, and he follows Rousseau's nuance admirably. The really nice thing is that you can see the student learning to transfer Rousseau's language to his own over the course of the text; early on, it is largely a series of loosely-copied phrases and ideas, but by the end he is summarizing and explicating the text in completely new langauge.

The annotations start out simply, as he picks out the basic ideas that Rousseau is setting up, ignoring a lot of the finer details. This is about two types of inequality and it doesn't make any sense to talk about the source of natural inequality. You could do worse than to get this out of the first 2 paragraphs, I think. Going on, the annotations bear a pretty strong resemblance to Rousseau's own wording, as he teases out the meaning. However, by his notes on the bottom of the page, the language has shifted to his own. Similarly, on the 2^nd page he defaults to small revisions to Rousseau's phrases – clarifying them – but then summarizes in his own language at the bottom. He is picking out the connections between the pieces and finding a way to tell what he understands generally from the pieces he has translated.

 

The development gets clear on the third and final page of the excerpt. Almost all the language has shifted to his own. He has worked through translating the ideas and language of the text for long enough; now he can work with it more freely. Overall, this is the point of the kind of read-by-fire methodology I've been talking about. Working with what you can – swinging between one clear point and another – pays off as the student has clearly moved from low to higher text access and maneuverability.

Gathering Data

This is part 8 in my series on trying to teach students to use annotations to read. The first entry was posted back at the beginning of September, titled “The Problem.”

So, a discussion of tracking and data is probably long overdue. Stupid, meaningless words. “We’d like to see some data on your kids.” Measuring student development in something as complex as literacy is like living perpetually in late November or early December and trying always to make a definitive statement about whether or not it’s winter. Of course, there’s an objective marker on a calendar somewhere that tells you the answer flat out, but even in the face of that kind of absolute idea, day to day experience kind of contradicts it sometimes. You’re pretty sure you’re in a state of becoming winter though. Some days more than others. Measuring literacy is kind of like that, I guess.

With that in mind, I decided to try to track some target students using a more narrative style. It gave me a chance to reflect on what was really happening for each student, day to day, but also to look explicitly at whether or not it seemed like this reading and annotation method was helping.

I focus on three categories – frequency of annotations in general, the extent to which the student's notes are reflecting central ideas in the text, and the potential for moving these notes from a simple summary level to a more explicative level. It's just a basic Word document with some columns, but it's easy enough to quickly throw some thoughts into or to print off for the odd administrator request or student conference.

In my English classes, I've been tracking a handful of students – mostly students with IEPs or who are ELLs, but a couple who self-selected by coming for individual help with reading comprehension early in the year – and I've just been finishing up scanning in a bunch of their work. Unfortunately, there's going to be a big gap in work because we started reading To Kill a Mockingbird. Maybe I'll get a chance to scan in some annotations or sticky notes from students later on. Maybe I'll sleep a little bit or finish another Game of Thrones book or something.

I've been trying to keep up with these narrative trackers on each of my target students. For the most part, I've been successful – it's not so much about taking the time to write in the 30-80 words per entry, which is pretty quick and painless. It's actually collecting the texts so that I can make copies. As I pointed out in the overall description of the method a while back, using student annotations the way we do is nice for real-time assessment as students are actually reading.

So, for instance, these annotations from early in the year might indicate that the student is able to decode the text on the most basic level, despite relatively high complexity. However, less central details – the description of the architecture, for instance – are left unmentioned. The student could use these annotations to summarize the story or talk about things like theme or characterization, but close-reading discussions like tone or author's craft would require a strategic rereading.

Teaching "Masque of the Red Death"

This is part 6 of my project on teaching students to actually read.  The first post was "The Problem" back on 91/12.  The following lesson is simply an example of how I might introduce this method with a text that I'm absolutely certain will challenge my students.  See the previous 2 lessons for other fine-detail thoughts on how I ran this class.

Reading “Masque of the Red Death” day 1                

Aim:  How do I use annotation to read really difficult texts?
Obj:  SWBAT use elimination and annotation to read and summarize a text.

CC standard:  RI.9-10.5  Analyze in detail how an author's ideas or claims are developed and refined by particular sentences, paragraphs, or larger portions of a text. 

Do Now:  Read the following passage and use any knowledge you have to try to make sense of it.  If you can't figure out all of it together, pick out individual words and try to figure out what they might mean.

Peruse the language of this query to determine the relative meanings of the words vis a vis the overall knowledge of which you are already possessed.  In the event of a complete inability to associate local meaning with a sense of the global intentions of this statement, select individual signifiers and explain how their meanings might add up to something.

Work through the language with students –

Tricks for using annotation to understand texts
Look for words/phrases that you do know
Read those phrases together
Put together meaning that you can write/summarize in the margins

So let's look at a really tough story now. 

This next part here is key – it’s the good ole’ workshopy process of doing the first paragraph or two together, followed by paired work, then individual work – scaffolding down to students feeling ok about going into their heads and doing it themselves.

Read through the first paragraph of “Masque” - work through the tricks with students.

OK, so now with the person next to you, let's try to figure out what the next two paragraphs are about.  Use the 3 tricks for using annotation and we'll see if we can figure this text out.  [circulate to assess student progress – keep students moving despite frustration]

Share out – keep filling in annotations as students share them – possibility to massage their actual notes.

OK, so now your job is to finish reading this text.  Use all the tricks!  [circulate to assess]

Share out what we get in the last moments of class time.

Homework:  Finish annotating “Masque of the Red Death” (DUE TOMORROW) 

Introducing the method’s use with really hard texts

This is part 5 of my project on teaching students to actually read.  The first post in this series was "The Problem," posted on 9/1/12.

Early in the year, I teach the idea of summarizing the main ideas in the margins first, using simpler texts so that students can focus on the skill apart from struggling with content.  They get it, but honestly there’s not always a lot of buy in to that kind of idea because kids know that they can hold all the ideas in their head without annotating much.  The first chance they get to really see the value of annotating for comprehension is when we read Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death.” 

This is a hard text for students, as the numbers show on my previous post.  So I start out with an extreme version of the annotation method – getting kids to really see that they can read around unfamiliar words and make meaning out of very difficult texts.  It’s a bit gimmicky, but here’s what I do.  Students come in to a Do Now that says this:

Read the following passage and use any knowledge you have to try to make sense of it.  If you can't figure out all of it together, pick out individual words and try to figure out what they might mean.

Peruse the language of this query to determine the relative meanings of the words vis a vis the overall knowledge of which you are already possessed.  In the event of a complete inability to associate local meaning with a sense of the global intentions of this statement, select individual signifiers and explain how their meanings might add up to something.

            Predictably, most students don’t really write much of anything in the 3-4 minutes I give them.  They generally get stuck on peruse and if they remember to read through that, query and vis a vis usually seal the deal.  Then we get to work as a class.  I play a bit dumb and say that I don’t know all the words either, but can read around them – it’s important to make this very caricatured, I think.  Students have to know you know what you’re talking about and playing a part.  I highlight words I supposedly don’t know and turn them white, leaving them erased.  Usually we end up with the following.

              the language of this           to determine the            meanings of the words           the overall knowledge of which you are already possessed.  In the event of a complete inability to                          , select individual                and explain how their meanings might add up to something.

 From this, students are able to read that the passage says:

“Do something . . . the language of this to determine the meanings of the words.”  Then, a more advanced student rearranges “knowledge . . . already possessed” to “knowledge you already have – something you already know” and this set of ideas, along with “how their meanings might add up” leaves the final blank as having something to do with words.  Students have made meaning out of a seemingly impenetrable passage, largely by simply removing 4 words and 2 unclear phrases. 

            They are ready to move on to “Masque of the Red Death” which will require them to use this skill continuously throughout.  I’ll post that lesson separately. 

Measuring Reader Confidence

This is part 4 of my project on teaching students to actually read.  The first post in this series was "The Problem," posted on 9/1/12.

So I thought that I would try to measure this process as thoroughly as possible.  Obviously I’ll want to do it by measuring students’ abilities to read increasingly difficult texts, but simply testing kids with comprehension questions and observations of their annotations would leave out one of the most important factors – their sense of their own comprehension skills.  Since the problem is really students’ inability to confront difficult texts with the skills and the confidence to work through the reading, it seemed to me that I should measure the more subjective aspect of comfort with texts.  So I asked the kids how they felt about the texts I was giving them after a brief pre-reading skim. 

            Let me be clear about this.  I usually hate these kinds of things.  I’ve never found much use for interest surveys in reading workshops and I’ve never been able to use learning style tests.  It turns out that most kids would rather talk and have hands-on experiences.  No shit.  But I’m interested in the power of confidence and I wanted to know whether or not this methodology improved students’ senses of their reading abilities along with their more objectively-measured abilities.  So I just asked them how they felt and I’ll do it again from time to time. 

            Basically, I showed them the articles and said something along the lines of “If I asked you to read this and then we were going to do something that you needed to know it, how would you feel?”  Not terribly scientific.  I even neglected to survey my smallest class, from which 3 of my target students are drawn.  But that’s the day to day of being a teacher.  We had other things going on.  Their responses were limited to the 4 possibilities listed.  You can make what you want to out of these numbers.  The Stop & Frisk articles were part of my initial preassessment for the year, tied to a writing task.  They were the first things students got from me.  The Poe came about 7 or 8 classes later, after students had been introduced to the annotation method but hadn’t really seen it in action.  I’ll post a full bit on those lessons later.

            Hopefully, I can finish this introductory unit and reward kids with some more Poe – maybe “Tell-tale Heart” – because they loved “Masque.”  When I hand it to them, I’ll ask them the same question and get their response.  Hopefully, the numbers go up. 

New York Times Stop & Frisk articles

104 students surveyed

Very uncertain – 27  (26%)

Uncertain – 43  (41%)

OK with it – 28  (27%)

Comfortable – 6  (6%)

Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death”

102 students surveyed

Very uncertain – 58  (57%)

Uncertain – 36  (35%)

Ok with it – 6  (6%)

Comfortable – 2  (2%)

The Method (A Basic Overview)

This is part 2 of my project on teaching students to actually read.  The first post in this series was "The Problem," posted on 9/1/12.

            So this is what I’ve been doing.  It’s what I’ll continue to do, obviously with some thoughtful alterations as necessary.  Although it contains a lot of standard practices, the systematic approach and the desired outcomes are a bit different – students using these practices to actually read difficult texts, while teachers use them to assess.  It’s important to note that this entry isn’t meant to be exhaustive and none of the posts on this site are meant to be particularly linear.  Questions raised here might be answered later.  Alternate examples or individual anecdotes are coming.

What do I actually do to teach students to read difficult texts?

             
          Basically, it’s a process of slowing down and annotating what students understand while reading.  Students are required to write summary annotations in the margins every time they complete a given section of a text.  This might be a paragraph, a page, or even just a line if a text is very complex.  The key is to have students recognize the difficulty of the text and adjust their annotations accordingly.  So, if a student is comfortable with the meaning of a text – perhaps it’s one of those terrible test prep packet readings – and needs to just focus on answering post-reading questions, she can annotate very lightly, perhaps just short phrases for every paragraph or two.  If a student is very challenged by a text, she can summarize what she understands about every line.  After several annotations have been written down, students look back over them, attempting to put the meaning of the text all back together in terms of their own words and understandings. 

But how does this help students understand the text?

            I came up with this method after the thousandth instance of a student reading a passage and then saying “I don’t understand any of that.”  My stock response for that was always “Of course you do.  Let’s look at it.”  Because students do understand things in even the most complicated texts – there are words, phrases, and whole ideas that are completely comprehensible, even comfortable.  The problem is that we’ve taught students to be caught up on what they don’t know.  So, having students read in terms of what they understand makes it possible to read more complex texts for some meaning, opening up the possibility for constructive re-readings that could then help students fill in gaps. 

            This is what we all do as competent adult readers.  I don’t always understand the finer points of the wonkish moments on Paul Krugman’s blog.  But I read it and I understand the text for the most part, often learning how to read the more specialist language of economics in the process.  Almost nobody understands the finer points of the instructions on tax return paperwork, but (unless we can afford to have somebody else file for us) we tend to trudge through and make sense of it, accumulating knowledge and the ability to read these types of texts in the meantime.  

            So, when students read a bit, take a couple seconds to think about what they just read, write a sentence or two in their own words to hit the high points, and then use these notes to make sense of the larger development of the text . . . they’re reading things that might have seemed unreadable to somebody just sitting down and reading from first to last word without any reflection in the middle.

How do I assess this in real time?

            The fantastic part about this method, from the standpoint of a teacher, is that any in-class readings are easy to assess.  A roving teacher can see the frequency of annotations, suggesting a student’s level of comfort with the text, as well as the accuracy of summaries.  Therefore, a teacher doesn’t have to wait until a student completes a text to individually assess whether or not a student is comprehending a text.  As a summative assessment, scanning a student’s annotations provides more information about his understanding of the entire text and its development throughout, since students are not as easily able to highlight portions of the text, to the exclusion of others. 

            During this process of assessment, it’s also very easy to quickly suggest ways that students could further their thinking, fill in gaps, look back at information they could fill in, and generally to show students how to get more from a text.  In my experience, this can informally take place by pointing at a particular annotation and asking things like “What do you mean here?” or “Is this all that’s going on?” or “What part of the text showed you this?”  When necessary, an important but un-annotated section of text can be pointed to and dissected with a few questions like “What’s happening here?” or “Can you tell me about this sentence/paragraph/section here?”  Generally, a student left this section un-annotated because it was confusing, so this gives the teacher another chance to walk through the process of taking apart a sentence to get what students do know from it.

So that’s the basic method? 

See, it’s pretty simple, right?  Tell students to read a bit and determine how difficult a text is (you have to teach kids to do this, or course), then slow down so they can very briefly summarize what they do understand as they’re going, then occasionally reread to put all the ideas together.  If the length of the text permits, have students go back over the text to fill in details once they understand the basics of the text.  It’s a scaffolding process really, and one that is certainly open to a continual reduction in the use of the tool as students develop their skills.  But let’s be honest.  This is a skill that lends itself to reading in graduate seminars.  The real trick is teaching students to determine exactly how much annotation is necessary for a particular text.  Yeah . . . that’s a challenge.  More on that later.